New EMC Data Lake Solution Aims to Provide Fast Value to Business Users

To help organizations simplify the complex task of building a data lake, the Federation Business Data Lake (FBDL), is designed for speed, self-service, and scalability for the enterprise, enabling organizations to begin making better-informed business decisions using big data analytics, according to EMC. Instead of 6 months or longer, EMC says the FBDL will allow organizations to deploy Hadoop and real-time analytics capabilities in as little as 7 days.

The FBDL meets the critical functional needs, supporting the requirement to store, analyze, surface and act. It has the ability to store both raw and modified data, do analytics at all levels, and uses advanced algorithms to discover new predictive patterns, presents data to users and applications to digest and prepare to take action on, and uses data to self-heal and optimize analytics.

“The target user is the CIO or the VP of IT,” said Aiden O’Brien, senior director at EMC, with responsibility for the company's strategic big data initiative. “What we are saying is, ‘You’ve been tasked, Mr. CIO, with making big data real and we are now in a situation where we can enable you to do that so you no longer need to be scared of getting that phone call from a business executive saying, 'I need you to build this use case.’ ”

According to O’Brien, organizations require a platform that enables standardization, but at the same time, provides flexibility to choose the different technology components they need for their individual use case. “Standardization and flexibility is what we are trying to achieve.”

The FBDL will provide solutions that allow for integration and interoperability with top analytics platforms such as SAS, Tableau and others. It also supports a variety of choices of Hadoop distribution including unlimited Pivotal HD as part of the Pivotal Big Data Suite, Cloudera and Hortonworks. In addition, a range of tools will be available with FBDL, including EMC technology onboarding service, EMC proof of value service, EMC big data vision workshop, and education services.

“Big data is absolutely a team sport. There’s the app developer, the data engineer, the data architect, the business user, the business executive, the visionary who can make all this happen," O’Brien said. “We need to provide a platform that gives all these different user groups a seamless, enjoyable experience so they can play their part on the team and deliver on their promise of big data.”